Corporate personhood is the idea that a corporation, separate from its employees, executives, and partners, has some of the same rights and responsibilities as conscious human beings. As discussed in the first article, “How Corporations Got The Same Rights as People (But Don’t Ever Go To Jail),” corporations have won legal battles granting them equal protection under the law, due process, and legal representation. However the conversation of corporate personhood has moved beyond the declaration of legal rights and protections and is now addressing corporate freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The concept of corporate conscience and its acting out in legal proceedings has large social, ethical, and legal effects. For example, corporations are now able to refuse service to and discriminate against any population of people in which they deem to be against the owners’ religion and allows them to participate in unethical behavior without consequence (with many battles ending in settlements that the company can afford to dish out). While I do believe that corporations have the right to establish a culture based on their own political, religious, and social beliefs, I believe that a line should be drawn when these beliefs and following actions are contrary to national law and common ethical beliefs (such as discrimination). If corporations are going to enjoy the same legal rights, responsibilities, and freedoms as live individuals, they should be held accountable for acting accordingly and to the same ethical standards as human beings.
A specific case study for this issue is offered in studying the role of IBM in developing and maintaining infrastructure to aid in Nazi efforts to eliminate the entire German Jewish population. In this case, IBM and its German subsidiaries allegedly offered advanced technology that analyzed census data, tracked Jewish individuals, and streamlined genocide operations through the use of punch cards. The primary dispute in this case was that IBM not only sold its technology to Nazi leaders, but actively maintained them and custom-designed the systems to the Nazis’ needs with the knowledge of the company’s counterpart in the United States. While I do not agree with Black that the Nazi demand for data and associated technologies drove IBM’s future advancement and do not go so far as to say IBM is responsible for the success of the Reich, I do believe that (assuming Black’s research is correct and IBM executives in the US were aware of its German subsidiary’s actions) IBM’s actions and efforts were unethical and they should take responsibility and “move on” as many other companies have done in recent years. The Holocaust has, since the beginning of the Reich, been known to be an unethical and immoral movement that violates a myriad of human rights. In no world should IBM have partaken enabling the Nazi’s to continue to dehumanize the Jewish people (in fact, as computer scientists I am tempted to say IBM should actually have taken action to use its technology to stop the crisis in Germany). Further, corporations should definitely refrain from doing business with immoral and unethical organizations.
Ethics 